KDE 4.3.0 is out, and it is a great release. It is unlikely that any one specific thing will strike the user as the most noticeable improvement; rather, the overall user experience of KDE has improved greatly in KDE 4.3.0. The release's codename, Caizen, is a Japanese philosophy that focuses on continuous improvement throughout all aspects of life. That has been the goal of the KDE team for 4.3.0: polish, polish, polish. The statistics from the bug tracker speak for themselves: 10,000 bugs have been fixed. In addition, close to 63,000 changes were checked in by a little under 700 contributors. That is not to say that the KDE team did not add a large number of new features: 2000 feature requests were implemented in the past 6 months, meaning that any user's pet feature might well be among the improvements KDE 4.3.0 brings.

The changes in KDE 4.3 are largely in three categories: the desktop workspace, the applications, and the development platform.

Plasma, KDE's desktop interface and KWin, KDE's window and compositing manager are now working more closely together. Desktop effects and the Plasma shell now share their themes, and it is also possible to have separate sets of Plasma widgets and wallpapers on each virtual desktop. The new Air theme makes a visual difference. It is much lighter than the Oxygen theme, which is still available through the Desktop Settings dialog.

On the applications front, KDE 3 users will like the new tree view in System Settings, which more closely resembles KDE 3's KControl. Dolphin, KDE's file manager, now show previews of images contained in a directory as an overlay for the directory icon. Hovering over it enables a slideshow of the images in the directory the icon represents.

KDE's development platform has become more stable, more performant, leaner and at the same time more complete. For Plasma applet developers, there is now a geolocation plugin that makes it possible to query the current location. This is used in the OpenDesktop applet to show people near you. The new KDE PolicyKit library provides a mechanism for applications to authorise certain actions based on profiles. A KDE-style API makes it secure and easy to temporarily elevate privileges for an application.

Of course, those are just a few examples of the changes in KDE 4.3.0. All of the seemingly small changes add up to make a wonderful difference to our users.

The KDE 4.3.0 Desktop

The KDE 4.3.0 release will be followed by the usual monthly bugfix and translation updates. The next feature release, KDE 4.4.0, will see the light of day in January 2010. For those among our readers who enjoy microblogging, we have set up an experimental "LifeStream" tracking the "!kde" tag on Identi.ca and Twitter. Check out buzz.kde.org for the stream. Jos Poortvliet, who also wrote the excellent release announcement, has created a screencast (Ogg Theora, HTML 5) that gives an overview of the versatility and coolness of KDE 4.3.0. As always, be sure to check out the release announcement for more details.

Comments

". You actually tell me I have to close down all the apps I have running, interrupt all the tasks I'm doing, just to mess around with "maybe broken" disk?"

Sounds to me that you aren't taking your task too seriously.
Which indicates to me that this whole story about you fixing disks is balloney..

"KDE4 is a windows clone in that it doesnt allow me to control my own workflow, it tries to dictate how I shall do things in stead of offering me options so I can decide for myself."

Hmm, you are talking shit on this too.
You claim to have no Windows experience, yet you seem to know how it works.
And kde4 is a clone of windows because both don't work as you like them too?
That is just plane silly.

" What actually tells the kernel to do the mounting varies alot."

And you cannot choose any variation that fits your needs?

" IMO it is _perfectly_ reasonable that the DESKTOP running on the console tells the kernel to do the mounting, _AT USERS WILL_."

And that is what kde4 is capable of.
But the problem with users like vedranf and you is that they aren't capable of performing the manual mounting.

"I think it makes a heck lot more sense to fix KD4"

And what are you doing to fix kde4?
Rants like these are counter productive.

" If someone wrote a new kicker for KDE4, not using plasma - would it even be accepted?"

Why do people always want to put everything into 1 software package?
If someone ports kicker to kde4, it is quite easy to install it as seperate package into kde4.
It is even that easy that vedranf doesn't even realize that his pet mounting applet in kde3 is a third party extension of kicker.

And your macos/windowmaker/windows/xfce rant was rather funny.
So you dont want to pay for software, so windows can only run on 1 platform (but you don't complain about that with macos), and apperently, you aren't able to install additional software in windows either..

So, since I dont want to interrupt my other tasks and work to look at disks that might be broken, I'm not taking my tasks seriously - and because I said I dont have windows legacy, you think I'm saying I dont have any windows experience? Amazing logic.

It's not just that neither windows nor KDE4 dont do what I want, if you had been paying attention, you'd notice that I specified what they share that I dont like.

And yes, I so far I have not managed to get KDE4 to do mounting the way I prefer it, and I am perfectly capable of doing manual mounting (but I suspect you wouldnt know how to mount partitions from devices that no longer have partition table intact, huh?) - but that's not the point here (for crying out loud.)

I'm glad you enjoyed my rant. No, I dont I dont see the point of paying for cripled software when I can get that for free (that is sarcasm, in case you wonder), and I did point out that _both_ macos and windows only run on certain hardware. Maybe you should read more carefully? What makes you think I cnnot install software on Windows, and what the heck is the relevance anyhow?

And lastly, the source code for the media applet for kicker that has been the topic for the last few dozens of messages in this very enlightening thread is not a third party applet, it is right there in the kdebase tarball, under kdebase-3.5.10/kicker/applets/media.

people have given several options to mount devices in kde.
Why isn't there any option that suits your need?

It should be simple: the device pops up somewhere, you click on it if you want to open it, and it gets mounted in the process.

About broken devices: they usually don't get mounted automaticly, so i don't see any reason why you want to disable automount.

the problem with linux is that while kde offers a nice way to access external drives when you want to open/close files, not every linux application is using it. This makes accessing external drives a pain for some people.
But in stead of contacting the developers of such applications to fix this situation, users turn to KDE to come with workarounds to address the short comings of third party applications.

The kicker applet for media devices that is being discussed over here isn't part of kde3 at all: it is a third party addon for kicker.
A similar third party applet is available for plasma panel.
It makes me wonder why kde3 users have no problem installing that non kde applet for kicker to do the job, but demand kde4 to contain such an applet by default.

I see your problem, i understand your reasoning, i agree with your conclusion. KDE4 took a turn into a direction i never even feared it would. Power user's favorite pet has turned into something that looks like a mix of windows, osx and gnome on the surface. Why?
Because some people who fanatically promote the 80/20 rule mentality have risen to the top of the commit list because of their engagement. Well fine, Plasma and solid and everything are nice frameworks, and surely noone wants them to be ripped out again. But STILL, what was possible with kicker in 3.5 - not possible with plasma panels. The system notification thing comes nowhere close to the cool mockups that circulated before 4.0, and browsing a huge folder with dolphin takes several times as long as both old konqueror's kpart and windows explorer accessing it via virtualbox's shared folder feature.
A cool kicker spinoff named slicker - although the website states

... looking for Slicker - 'the kicker'-thingie? ... it has metamorphed into Plasma

five years down the road, plasma still can't do it.
And adding a folderview applet to the desktop and rotating it - it's not even anti-aliased and looks ugly as some creature from planet fnord.

Dolphin uses khtml for showing the filesystem, which is part of Konqueror.

More exactly: Dolphin is a UI which uses the Konqueror backend. That's why it was possible for one person to start it as a great new tool.

Now it got far enough that's it's the default filemanager in KDE4.

There's one thing where I agree, though: I expect right-click to show me options and left click to execute the default option. Even current MacOSX programs use right-click (or "control-click", which is just another name for "I only have one button, but I need button two").

Besides: If you don't like getting bad reactions from all sides and don't want to stop people from actually implementing your suggestions (even when they come from others later on), you should start to critizice constructively, and the first step towards that is to write nice and friendly messages.

Attacking people doesn't serve your cause. It just makes them harden in their stance, not to follow your way, even though they would otherwise begin to think different later on. In German: "Du verhärtest ihre Meinung gegen deine Idee".

Doesn't matter. Important thing is today konqueror uses dolphin kpart and doesn't have any feature that isn't already present in dolphin.

> Besides: If you don't like getting bad reactions from all sides and don't
> want to stop people from actually implementing your suggestions (even
> when they come from others later on), you should start to critizice
> constructively, and the first step towards that is to write nice and friendly
> messages.

Since 4.0 I wrote nice and friendly messages. Response from devs was always one of the:

a) it will introduce unnecessary complexities in the code
b) it will create more clutter
c) it will confuse users
d) it will break our design/vision

and usually fanboys would say that current situation is best possible. Now I just tend to be sarcastic and don't expect anything.

"Since 4.0 I wrote nice and friendly messages. Response from devs was always one of the: a) it will introduce unnecessary complexities in the code b) it will create more clutter c) it will confuse users d) it will break our design/vision and usually fanboys would say that current situation is best possible. Now I just tend to be sarcastic and don't expect anything."

a), b) and c) are totally true in this case. See what I (and others) explained earlier, a "Simply mount" option is not necessary (though you can still create this option on your desktop, as Aaron pointed out).

d) is the hard reality of software. Whenever you try to make a product that pleases anybody, in the end you'll please nobody. A good product consists of clear design decisions.

A nice example is programming languages: There is a saying that the only good programming languages have been designed by one or at most two people. Examples are C and C++: While many programmers hate these languages, they have been around for 40 years (or 30 years, respectively) which is ages in computer science, and still are used excessively.

right, so the labels on you disk are really poor. if you name every file on disk with a similarly bad choice of label, you'll get the same kind of problems for files in the fs too.

So, hide technical details from them because KDE users are stupid? ;)

no, not because people are stupid but because it should not be necessary to know what a C++ pointer is to use a C++ application, to use an absurd but accurate analogy.

That analogy sucks. 'C++ pointer' is to 'C++ application' not what 'device node' is to 'mount point icon'. Anyways.

similarly, it shouldn't be necessary to know what /dev/sda1 is to use a drive.

Well, most probably it should not be necessary, but clearly it is an important bit of information that should be provided if one has the desire.

if you need to know that information _from the device notifier_ then something is wrong.

Ohh is it. The kernel detects a new device and adds it *somewhere* into the /dev tree. Clearly, getting that information via dmesg|tail is the only right way to tell where, right?
Besides, if you start telling me which usage of computers is right and which is wrong, then something is wrong.

now, if you want to know device names, use the hard disk component from the system information widget.

Oh yeah - that is a so much more convenient and straight to the point way of finding out about the freshly added device node... Nevermind i could not find anything to deliver that information when it is relevant, despite opening the full kinfocenter (which is architected for a different task: getting all information)-

different purpose, different target audiences, different information and display. aka "design". with the design philosophy you are trying to espouse, we'd have no tools that are approachable for average users and a bunch of really gnarly to use bits that few people would want to.

This mentality (rip everything out that joe average user would not care about) is so what i despise most about KDE4 (although mostly contained in plasma and dolphin - which makes it no less frustrating). Clearly this is easier than creating a DE which provides everything applicable at ALL in a certain context in a way that makes sense, i.e. makes it accessible by quality self descriptive UIs and info tooltips, and gives an option to slim down the interface (i.e. hide stuff only advanced users might fully grok). BTW this last bit of ripping advanced stuff out really should be something the distributions should handle anyways...
But instead, it is done the other way round. Useful features are not exposed on the default UI because they are considered 'distracting' and presumably do not suffice the 80/20 rule. This results in many features never used by people who, in the end, would consider them very beneficial to their computer work.

And that desktop shell doesn't have some essential features like manual media mounting.

well, no. you didn't add such an action to the Device Actions configuration, and we don't have such an option by default because it's not useful to most people.

See above. So judging by this statement, KDE is not anymore aiming at the power users AT ALL because they are less than 20 percent. No wonder the abundant experience of positive surprise which accompanied the daily work with KDE3 has left the building.

Right click on a device seemed obvious for me to get similar menu now.

so you trained yourself using a tool which you found useful but which either didn't spend much time thinking about usability or

Yeah, right clicking an icon to get offered a context menu with relevant actions is so far off here.
What do you think how many people confronted with that stupid applet tried to do exactly that?

had a different target audience,

(people with more than one mouse button?)

and now you have some habits that don't align nicely with the rest of our user base.

The rest of Aaron Seigo's wishlist user base, that is.
Before you appeared on the KDE project, never was there such a statement to be heard.

i don't need/want to deal with sarcasm at the end of every one of your comments. it's unnecessarily frustrating when all i'm trying

Oh please, don't get all soppy here. Criticism is not out there for your amusement. Often times, it's not even unjustified.
How about fscking that 80/20 principle that crippled down GNOME so much and strive for a higher feature density *and* accessibility instead? Cutting down on UI items can always be done somewhere downstream.

I could also install some automounting software or use pmount from console. Then install some keybindings daemon to bind multi key shortcuts to pmount commands. Then some printing software, then... What's the purpose of this DE then if I have to install tens of additions apps to complement its (KDE4) shortcomings? This is KDE's job and KDE compiled for svn should be able to do that without additional magic.

"I can also manually mount by clicking on the device notification widget"

So manual mounting does work in kde4.

According to vedranf, manual mounting doesn't work.

" Why do you defend the lack of this feature in KDE? "

I'm not defending that.
Everyone knows that featurewise, kde4 is behind kde3. But trolling about it like vedranf does doesn't help at all. I won't feel urged to implement this with his aditude. Also, feature requests should be done on bugs.kde.org.

"Why do you think Debian is crippled?"

It turned out that vedranf crippled his distribution himself. So i stand corrected: Debian isn't crippled, only the installation of vedranf is.
Vedranf also isn't looking for a solution.
Several people have attempted to help out, but he refuses. He expects this to work by default, not after installing additional software or changing his configuration.
That is kinda silly.

But that isn't exactly what i meant.
I think, featurewise, if you would count every featere in kde 3.5 and 4.3, the latter probably has more than the former.

But for users, it is the features they were used to using that counts. And untill kde 4.3, any kde user that i have met knew some features that they used in kde 3.5, which weren't available in kde4. I think kde4.3 will be the first release that makes users forget about 3.5

As long as KDE4 cannot duplicate even the simplest things from my KDE3 desktop (hue on background image, panel widgets that stay put where I place them, horisontally scrolling rss feed reader in panel, ways to script desktop settings), there's no chance at all that I, as a user, will forget KDE3. The fact that KDE4 is picky about hardware, sometimes annoyingly slow, full of annoying misfeatures one cannot get rid of or turn off, still very unstable and ridden with bugs (too much to list up here)... and also even look bad (konsole session menues and more) despite all the annoying bling - makes KDE3 unforgetable in comparison.

Care to point out one single thing in the list I mentioned that is distro related?

For the record, distros used are gentoo, ubuntu/kubuntu and the openSUSE live CD, and hardware used are multiple PCs, laptops, eeepc, eeebox and an old iBook. And the problems are the same no matter what distro or hardware used. The problems I describe are only related to KDE4.

I said that I won't be adding new comments, but I can't help myself. Sorry fanboys.

> I consider your complaint very justified.

Actually, After Aaron's comment I see now that it wasn't justified. I just didn't think much. Adding more features introduces clutter and more options would confuse users, and we don't want that, don't we. We have to be careful with our users as giving them additional possibilities and useful options could force them to use GNOME. Also, enabling mounting without dolphin would break our design, vision and introduce unnecessary complexities in the code. Our motto is one "dolphin per desktop" and "you don't need the right click: with KDE you always click wrong".

Now, add analog clock plasmoid and resize it to the 1/4 of your desktop. Try to rotate it!! You see, you see... how it's funny. Now show it to your friends and you will most definitely be the koolest kid around like me! With useful features like this one, you will soon forget all about mounting and other techno babble.

Mounting just work here, I didn't need to install any additional software (kubuntu and archlinux). If you're compiling the whole kde from scratch you should expect to do some manual work, sounds logical to me... that's why distros exist.

Sure, first click on the Device Notifier applet in the panel, there you should get the list of devices as you showed on your picture (I don't get size of devices either, like you btw). Then click on one of the device that is on the list, that will mount the device and open dolphin. To unmount a device, repeat first step, then hover the device you want to unmount, an eject icon will appear, click on it and it will unmount it. Works here (kubuntu, archlinux) and on my friends opensuse and gentoo.

Really don't get his problem, ok so i insert a device here and the device notifier tells me about it. (It does not mount it) if i click it it just works (opens in dolphin mounted) to unmount it I can click the device notifier and tell it to by clicking an "eject like" icon. My wife as no idea what mount is yet she operates this devices without any problem. So really I have no idea what his problem his maybe it was my distro that this for me dunno. but maybe he should be asking his distro to do that for him since mine did it for me.
But maybe I'm stupid and I don't get the problem.

What you describe is just the normal device notifier plasmoid. The alleged one from kde-look.org does nothing else than mount the inserted device without having you to click (and it does show multiple option, if there are, within the notification window, not in a seperate pop-up).
This might be useful if you have an application which isn't able to mount something (eg. if you want to save a website from within a browser on a usb device without opening (and closing) Dolphin first), but this is certainly not a showstopper.

"(eg. if you want to save a website from within a browser on a usb device without opening (and closing) Dolphin first)"

This again shows the real problem underneath the bashing here. There would have been exactly zero discussion on silly "simply mount" options in device notifier if every widget toolkit would just use the KDE file dialog if run from KDE. This kind of integration is _not_ rocket science.

so I don't know where to click because there are no difference between two disks shown. I'm not laying. Please click on the link.

Mounting fails because there is no dolphin here. I don't use it, so I don't have it installed. I don't want this device to be open by file manager at all. I just want to save some files from an app that is already open. If dolphin starts I would close it immediately. Requiring huge application to be installed and run every time just to mount device is beyond stupidity.

> Requiring huge application to be installed and run every time just to
> mount device is beyond stupidity.

* dolphin isn't a huge application
* yes, we expect you to have a file manager for integration purposes
* you can modify the settings in system settings to not use a file manager for mounting
* it's only 'stupidity' for you, but it's actually the workflow most people need; they don't tend to open a disk "just because", they want to work with it. breaking it into a series of steps where the first one, "mount it", is a technical detail that gets them (from a user POV) no closer to their goal is non-optimal

I don't think this is entirely true. An easy and quick way to just mount a device is something I would probably use too.

Right now I'm using Kubuntu Jaunty with KDE 3.5. I haven't used 4.x much yet, so I don't know exactly how it works there.

Although I do think that from KDE's PoV KDE development should mainly focus on usability applications that are actually built on KDE libraries and provide all the good KDE integration, I myself do have to use apps regularly that do not fit in.

Right now when I put a CD in my drive or connect an external disk, I get a pop-up which asks me what I want to do. (Open in filemanager, listen to the songs, etc.) In this pop-up, I would probably click the "Just mount" option most of the time if it would be there. Right now I click the "Open in filemanager" option and then just close the filemanager. Other times I cancel the dialog and use the right-click & mount option on the desktop icon.

Applications that I use, but do not include KDE/mount integration are Mathematica, Opera, Java based apps, such as Maple, Dosbox and games that need a cd to play (both Linux and Wine based games).

So for me a "Just mount" option would be quite handy. Letting KDE automatically mount anything as soon as it's connected may be even better. Although I do not always need that either. When I play a game in ePSXe for example, the game cd doesn't have to be mounted.

I agree that the existing workflow of immediate access to a filesystem from a filemanager is something that should not be changed. Adding an additional option to just mount a device after it's inserted could also be handy though.

>So when Aaron says that majority of users like the default workflow (mount with dolphin), he is just talking, excuse my language, bullshit.

No, your language is not excused anymore. Start saying what you have to say in a constructive way, or shut up please. By the time you have become one of the most constructive and productive KDE hackers, we will allow you to talk "bullshit" too.

And if he even bother too look, it has been downloaded a pitfull of 1124 times. Compared to the 7 digit of KDE users out there, Aaron is totally right saying that the majority of users like the default workflow. So yes, the vedranf caracter is talking bullshit.

Compared to standard unix mount(8) that I have usually used to mount, it is huge and slow.

> yes, we expect you to have a file manager for integration purposes

OK, but do you also expect it for mounting purposes?

> you can modify the settings in system settings to not use a file manager
> for mounting

I see now. But adding new action is all but user friendly. What to put in command field? Should I use mount or pmount? What will be the mountpoint? Also, this opens unnecessary dialog slowing the whole process. It's better to have a small menu, like in that KDE3 applet.

> it's only 'stupidity' for you, but it's actually the workflow most people need;
> they don't tend to open a disk "just because", they want to work with it

Well, I'm an engineer. My friends are engineers, scientists, sysadmins, etc. This is stupidity for all of us, and our workflow is ... well I already told you. We can only conclude that KDE4 is not designed for us (but could be for both types of users) and we'll have to stay on KDE3 and eventually move on to something better.

I see now. But adding new action is all but user friendly. What to put in command field? Should I use mount or pmount? What will be the mountpoint?

On my system, both mount and pmount work for me, but my user is member of the right groups so pmount is probably the better option.

pmount %d %f

should do the trick for the command line, furthermore, I have

"The device must be of the type StorageVolume"
"The devices property StorageVolume.ignored must equal false"

for the parameters, which seems to be the (rather liberal) default.
The mountpoint is the one suggested by the system (hal/solid?) e.g. usually something along the lines of /media/label or /media/disk etc. .

Side remark:

My personal workflow also benefits from a "mount without opening filemanager" option, because I often start applications from the command line + one file from a removable media (e.g. something like

1.) mount usb pen drive
2.) okteta /media/disk/largedatafile.bin &

). I would suggest submitting the inclusion of such a minimal mounting option to brainstorm.forum.kde.org. There is already an idea for a popup - less modification / version of the device notifier, which probably meets your requirements of being less cumbersome to use.

Finally, I would like to point out the obvious: If you enter a discussion with a certain amount of cynism and sarcasm because you are certain not to be successful with your request, you are, in fact, heading full speed into "self-fulfilling prophecy land".

"Isn't it easier to open Okteta and navigate to largedatafile.bin trough the places pane in the file dialog, which mounts the pen drive if it is not mounted yet?"

Not for me :-)

I'm fully aware that I'm not a statistically representative part of the KDE audience, e.g. I have a strange workflow, established in the course of over a decade on working with *nix systems, that works perfectly for me but seems to be overly complex or awkward for anybody else.

This is not to say that I don't change my workflow if new features arise that I find useful, as I'm for example an enthusiastic user of the krunner calculator or the [ctrl]-[i] filter option in dolphin. It's just that sometimes old patterns are so hard to overcome that I don't even try to do it any more, at least not consciously (e.g. launching applications with documents as file parameters from krunner / command line instead of using the open file dialog and the places side menu, for example).

Therefore, I appreciate that the KDE devs have provided tools that even odd balls like me can have their little pet features (e.g. the ability to have a "mount only" option). Furthermore, it seems clear that for those Operating systems out there that do automatic mounts seamlessly in the background - which seems to be nowadays the major "user friendly" distros - having such an option by default is neither intuitive nor addresses an especially pressing need. Distros that default to non-automounting behaviour (like the ones I choose, oddly enough) can provide such an option for their traget audience and once the kiosk tools are back in full swing (which may be already the case, since I had the last look at them at the time around the 4.2.0 release), it should also be possible to maintain such options for larger installation bases (say a whole department of odd ball engineers or scientists).

" it's only 'stupidity' for you, but it's actually the workflow most people need"

Utter BS again. You have absolutely _no_ properly done user tests to back up that claim with. Yes, it is so easy to put the blame of all kinds of stupid design decisions on the so called "most users", but no more I tell you, no more. It's like Fox News' "some people say", it's just a wild assumption. Do "most users" really care one way or the other? The problems become evident when people who _do_ care speak up, right?

Seriously, Aaron, your attitudes alone are now driving me away from KDE, even KDE3 now has a foul taste to it - I feel bad for having supported a desktop so much led by what I now understand is a leader of the marching morons. Shame.